The SoundExchange Billion Dollar Administrative Fee

palewook writes "On June 7th, Yahoo, RealNetworks, Pandora, and Live365 sent letters to US lawmakers emphasizing they owe SoundExchange 'administrative fees' of more than $1 billion dollars a year. These fees would be paid for the 'privilege' of collecting the increased CRB royalties effective July 15th, unless the Internet Radio Equality Act passes Congress. SoundExchange, the non-profit music industry entity, admits the levied charge of $500 per 'channel' is supposed to only cover their administrative costs. Last year, SoundExchange collected a total of $20 million dollars from the Internet radio industry. Under the new 'administrative fee' RealNetworks, which hosted 400,000 unique subscribed channels in 2006, would owe an annual administrative charge of 200 million dollars in addition to the retroactive 2006 rate hike per song played."

Comments

Re:If you didn't vote Libertarian YOU ASKED FORTHI

[Planesdragon]

The Republicrats and Democans enacted this and you voted for them asking for an intrusive and activist government. You have no room to complain now. You asked for this. By that logic, the libertarians are asking for broken roads, an end to education standards, and the conquest of the United States by Mexico.

Given the choice between total obliteration of our society and the fiscal raping of a few for-profit companies, I think we'll screw Real.

Re:If you didn't vote Libertarian YOU ASKED FORTHI

[WingedEarth]

The Libertarian Party is asking for conquest by Mexico, but Ron Paul isn't. He's against open borders, and that makes sense. The point of libertarianism is to protect the liberty of the American people. You can't do that by allowing foreign invasion.